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The Surgeons of the Civil War 



G. W. H. KEMPER, M.D. 

Formerly Assistant Surgeon 17th Regiment Indiana Voli 
teers, Wilder's Brigade, Mounted Infantry 

MUNCIE, IND. 






Gift 

Author 

NOV 9 Wt 



THE SURGEONS OF THE CIVIL WAR* 
G. W. H. Kemper, M.D. 

Formerly Assistant Surgeon 17th Regiment Indiana Volun- 
teers, Wilder's Brigade, Mounted Infantry 

MUNCIE^ IND. 

I come to you tonight as a member of the 
surgeons of the Civil War. I am marching 
with the rear guard of this ahiiost extinct body 
of heroes. To their memory I would add a few 
words of praise. To the surgeons of the pres- 
ent great war I bring a message of cheer, of 
hope and well wishes. 

Indiana sent to the Civil War 136 regiments 
of infantry, thirteen regiments of cavalry, one 
regiment of heavy artillery, twenty-five bat- 
teries of artillery, and numerous recruits. 

These organizations were provided with 500 
surgeons to care for .the sick and wounded. 
One surgeon and two assistant surgeons were 
assigned to each regiment. In times of peril 
extra civilian physicians were sent to reinforce 
the medical department, and when the danger 
seemed great the governor himself went to the 
front to look after the welfare of the boys on 
the fighting line. Our great war governor, 
Oliver P. Morton, never forgot the men he sent 
out to battle for their country. 

Indianapolis had a population of a little less 
than 17,000 inhabitants when the Civil War 
began. It had no hospital, no street cars, and 
but few of the modern conveniences of cities. 



* Address presented at the patriotic meeting of the Indiana 
State Medical Association, at Indianapolis, Thursday evening, 
Sept. 26, 1918. 



The surgeons of the Civil War met with 
handicaps that the surgeons of the present day 
will not encounter. We were not trained — the 
wars prior to 1861 gave us no practical experi- 
ence. The surgeons of the Mexican War came 
home from their two years of conflict, but they 
bequeathed to us no printed records. 

The surgeons of the Civil War assigned to 
the Indiana volunteers came from rural vil- 
lages, and were general practitioners. So far 
as I can determine, there was no medical man 
in Indiana in 1861 who was practicing surgery 
exclusively. At that date there was no medical 
college in the state. There were few noted sur- 
geons in the United States. Many of our sur- 
geons had never seen inside of the abdomen 
of a living subject. The age of medical spe- 
cialties had not dawned upon the profession. 

I can only speak for Indiana, but I make no 
doubt that many of our surgeons of the Civil 
War had never witnessed a major amputation 
when they joined their regiments; very few of 
them had treated gunshot wounds. Let us be 
sparing of our criticism of these men. What- 
ever else we may say for or against the medical 
men of Indiana at that period I want to say for 
them that they were patriotic, and willingly 
entered the service. 

The only approach to our present day Red 
Cross was the Christian Commission — well 
meaning in its purposes but limited in funds. 
We had no Y. M. C. A. in our camps. We had 
chaplains to care for the religious wants of the 
men, assist at the burial of the dead, and preach 



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Dr. G. VV. H. Kemper 



to us in the open air. Occasionally an itinerant 
evangelist visited us and sounded the gospel 
trumpet. We were short in books and papers, 
but our men were orderly, moral, and I may 
say even religious. 

We were not provided with trained nurses — 
male or female, as at the present day. Florence 
Nightingale, with a band of noble nurses went 
to the British army in the Crimean War in 1854, 
but she did not publish her book on nursing 
until 1859. Our women in the 60's did not 
accompany the armies to the front. They re- 
mained at home and toiled, and wept, and 
prayed as they scanned the lists of dead and 
wounded after our great battles. I saw but two 
women on a battlefield ; after the battle of 
Farmington, Tennessee, in October, 1863, these 
women suddenly appeared upon the field with a 
bucket of water and tin cups. I dont know 
whether they were Union or Confederate in 
sympathy, but they gave a cup of cold water to 
the wounded — to the men clad in blue and clad 
in gray. If I knew their names I would honor 
them here tonight. • 

When we consider the medical men of sixty 
years ago, deprived of present day advance- 
ment in our art may we not congratulate them 
for doing their work as well as they did? 
Doubtless, they frequently erred, and may have 
performed amputations when the same member 
might be saved today. 

Our regimental outfits were meager as com- 
pared with the present war. Our surgeons had 
not heard of the gospel of extreme cleanliness, 
as Lister did not announce his principles of 



antiseptic surgery until 1867 — two years after 
the close of the Civil War. 

Anesthetics were not as helpful to the sur- 
geons of the Civil War as they are to surgeons 
at the present day. A distrust of anesthetics 
existed in the early part of the Civil War 
mainly due to the fact that surgeons then were 
not accustomed to the use of these agents. 
Chloroform was first used fourteen years prior 
to the beginning of the Civil War, and its man- 
agement was not so well understood when that 
war began. This was the agent furnished to 
troops in the field — rather because it took less 
space in transportation than ether. The whole 
question of anesthesia is much better under- 
stood -at the present day than it was fifty years 
ago. 

Antitoxin and the various serums were un- 
known to us, and new sciences or departments 
of knowledge have sprung up out of veritable 
darkness for the advancement of medicine and 
surgery since that period when we toiled in the 
dim light of the morning preceding the midday 
Hght of discovery. 

I hope no one will infer that I would speak 
slightingly of the surgeons of the 60's — far 
from it. There were giants in those days. 
There were medical men in the Civil War 
whose minds rose like mountain peaks above 
the handicaps of that age ! 

The medical men of the Civil War furnished 
Surgeon-General Otis with data and statistics 
from which he and his assistants constructed 
the "Medical and Surgical History of the War 
of the Rebellion," in six large quarto volumes 



— three devoted to medical, and three to sur- 
gical topics. The three volumes on medical 
subjects comprise 2,951 pages; the three vol- 
umes devoted to surgery comprise 2,714 pages 

— a total of 5,665 pages. The volumes are 
illustrated with valuable engravings of a high 
order of art showing the ravages of disease. 
Besides these six volumes many valuable cir- 
culars and extensive articles in medical jour- 
nals were contributed by Civil War surgeons. 
One quarto size circular of one hundred pages 
is devoted to "Hip-joint Amputations," and 
is illustrated with numerous engravings — seven 
of which are finely colored pictures of success- 
ful amputations of the hip- joint. 

Confederate surgeons, also, contributed many 
valuable articles pertaining to medical and sur- 
gical topics. 

Those who contributed medical and surgical 
items of the Civil War deserve great praise. 

The surgeons of the present war enter the 
service better trained than the surgeons of the 
Civil War. They are supplied with valuable 
remedies, and every needful surgical appliance. 
They are aided by competent nurses. They 
have the Red Cross, the Y, M. C. A., and mil- 
lions, nay, billions of dollars at their service, 
and no one complains of the expense. No 
appeal is unheeded. 

Of the several thousand surgeons who served 
in the Civil War a comparatively small number 
remain alive. The great majority of them have 
fallen asleep, and "have gone on that unreturn- 
ing visit which allows of no excuse and admits 
of no delay." 



"And the names we loved to hear 
Have been carved for many a year 
On the tomb." 

Of the 500 surgeons who were commissioned 
by Governor Morton and went from Indiana, 
possibly less than one dozen remain alive. Re- 
cently, I asked in our state medical journal for 
the names of survivors— five answered the roll 
call, and I know of five others. All are old. 
I am about as young as any of them, and the 
snows of seventy-eight winters have fallen upon 
my head. 

The men in the ranks during the Civil War 
were generally volunteers. I count it one of 
the greatest honors of my life that I was a pri- 
vate soldier — a volunteer in the army of 75,000 
that responded to the first call of Abraham 
Lincoln. These were the three months men ; 
later, in the three years' service I was in the 
medical department. 

The biblical story records that when the 
brave hero, Gideon, crossed the river Jordan to 
punish a band of Midian cut-throats, and when 
he had captured Zebah and Zalmunna, their 
leaders, he said to them : "What manner of men 
were they whom ye slew at Tabor ?" And they 
answered : "As thou art, so were they ; each 
one resembled the children of a King." I would 
apply this description to the young men of the 
Civil War who came to the rescue of their 
country — each was every inch a king. 

Sometimes in our G. A. R. councils we "old 
boys of 1861 to 1865," almost envy the young 
men of today who are going abroad to fight the 



10 



great battle for the world's democracy. And 
yet, why should we? Why desire that the 
shadow on the dial of history go backward ten 
degrees, or go forward ten degrees? Have we 
not lived in the greatest era of history and 
noble deeds? 

Joel Chandler Harris says : "It is good to 
grow ol'." I am glad that I am old and that 
my lot and days have been cast in a century that 
has been a bank of knowledge, of wisdom and 
of great deeds. Much of it I have seen, and 
a small part of it I have been. Surely I have 
no cause for regret. I have looked into the 
face of Abraham Lincoln and heard him speak. 
A man once said to me that he would be willing 
to have his hair as white as mine if he could 
have seen that great man. 

May I say a few words for the songs and airs 
of the Civil War, for we still rely upon them 
for inspiration. As yet, no song writer of de- 
cided merit has come to the assistance of the 
soldiers of the present war. We have gifted 
women at the present day, but of their number 
no Julia Ward Howe has written a poem that 
will supersede the "Battle Hymn of the Re- 
public." If we desire to enthuse an audience 
we fall back upon "Marching through Georgia," 
and "Dixie." If there had been no prison pen 
we would not be singing "Tramp, Tramp, the 
Boys are Marching." The eye still moistens 
at "We Shall Meet but We Shall Miss Him," 
and various other songs of that period — songs 
which "have power to quiet the restless pulse 
of care." 



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When we came to the rescue of the flag in 
1861 there were thirty-six states in the Union, 
and the flag of that period carried that number 
of stars. Four years later when we emerged 
from the Civil War our great leader was a 
martyr, but not a star had been lost from the 
flag. Twenty-four thousand four hundred and 
sixteen of the sons of Indiana gave their lives 
for the preservation of the Union and the honor 
of the flag. 

That same flag, sweeping so victoriously over 
the battlefields of Europe carries forty-eight 
stars; may it come home crowned with glory, 
and not a single star tarnished. 

The' members of the Grand Army of the 
Republic will follow the boys of the present 
war — boys who are our sons and grandsons — 
with a pride for their success, and prayers for 
their safety. 

Our band is soon to die, but while life con- 
tinues we shall never lose our interest in the 
welfare of the land we love so well. 

As belated travelers who wait at a wayside 
station for a delayed train, and yet know it 
will surely come, so we comrades of the Civil 
War are waiting for the last command. 

The burdens of life fall heavily upon us ; 
that weariness for things new creeps on with 
age, and we are inclined to seek rest and re- 
member the days of old, and so fail to see the 
new visions of the future — nay, we are dream- 
ing dreams. 



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And as the shadows lengthen toward the sun- 
set of Hfe, pray for the departing spirit that it 
may enter a haven of rest. God bless the 
soldier of the Grand Army of the Republic — 
mustered out! 



Reprinted from 
Journal of the Indiana State Medical Association 
October, 1918, Vol. XI. p. 367 



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